


Fuck off, with your chiseled chin!

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Abrupt End, Banter, Comedy, F/M, Light-Hearted, Platonic Relationship, X6 has a secret sense of humour, unnamed SS, what is this, yelling compliments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 09:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Unlike the DWTA, the rare WTA responds to their misfortune by fighting rather than succumbing. They seem possessed by a fire that refuses to die down, regardless of circumstance, resulting in excess energy and anger when faced with normal situations. When subject is expressing their feelings around something or someone they do not wish to harm, they will resort to factual remarks and compliments, delivered as insults.X6-88 has a pet project: he wants to categorize every human he meets based on their bad luck. He is also super bored.The SS is angry all the time but finds herself unable to hurt him, no matter how much she wants to.They have fun. At least he does.





	Fuck off, with your chiseled chin!

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i don't know what this is exactly but i had fun

In his experience, when humans said they’ve “been through a lot”, they were usually just referring to random situations out of their control that just happened around them. Losing a pet, witnessing an accident and dropping your lunch was enough to qualify you has “having been through a lot”. If humans had, in fact, experienced abnormal and consistent amounts of misery in their life, they didn’t say “I’ve been through a lot”.  
They said “I don’t want to talk about it”.

Distinguishing between the two categories of depressed humans had become a hobby for X6-88. Initially he treated it as his own, silent experiment. Over the past year he had placed every human at the Institute into one of three categories: A little misfortune (I’ve been through a lot, or BTL for short), unfair amounts of misfortune (I don’t want to talk about it, or DWTA for short), and no misfortune (I’m actually fine, AF for short). The third category was quickly abandoned due to lack of representatives.

With the rare exceptions of Doctor Hardin (who had been caught in a gamma blast and had most of her face disintegrated) and Doctor Juhon (who tried to commit suicide by throwing himself into the synth manufacturing facility and drowned in a vat of pre-flesh slurry), every scientist was firmly BTL. There was also the case of Doctor Virgil (who became a super mutant and ran way) and his predecessor, Doctor Swan (who became a behemoth and lived in a lake now), but he had never known those people. It didn’t feel fair to judge them without meeting them first.

His little hobby also kept him somewhat occupied on his long, tiring treks across the filthy Commonwealth. He didn’t complain, of course, being the personal bodyguard of Father’s biological mother was important and honourable. It was also really fucking boring.  
70% of their time was spent just walking from point A to point B. When they got to point B they would fight (which would have been fun if she didn’t keep stealing his kills) and be sent to point C by some dirty settler, whose third cousin knew a guy at point D, who always knew a great place for a new settlement, designated point E. Point E was never a great place for a new settlement.  
Point E was always a shithole.

Now they were bunking down somewhere between the letters of the alphabet, in an old assembly plant previously used to manufacture vehicles. The future Director was talking about something.  
She always was.

The thing about the future Director was that she was hard to categorize. When they first met, he had thought her to be DWTA, since he knew a lot of her backstory already. Then they got to know each other, and she got to talking, and she hadn’t stopped since.  
it was a conundrum. Someone who had experienced unfair amounts of misfortune, but spoke about it constantly? He had considered adding a fourth category to his experiment, temper tantrum (TT for short), to hold only her, but that wasn’t very scientific.  
And now she was doing it again. Kicking the corpse of a raider they had dispatched, complaining loudly and consistently, pacing and punching and _going through a lot_.

“Fucking… It’s raiders! It’s always fucking- I mean, look at this place! Look at this gas-masked asshole!”  
She kicked another corpse, and X6-88 nodded.

“He is indeed wearing a gas mask.”

“It’s an infestation, that’s what it is! Just a- A- An invasion of drugged up bugs, put on this earth to make me miserable!”

She could be so childish at times. How this creature, with her deadly aim and running mouth, was going to lead the Institute he had no idea. He didn’t even flinch when an aluminium can flew across the room and narrowly missed his face.

“They keep building turrets, too! “Ooh, look at me, I’m a raider! I can build complicated pieces of machinery but I can’t lock a door! Oh well, time to pop some chems and kill a child!” Wow-wee!”

She was only firing herself up, but he had learned that it was impossible to stop her when she got like this. He was going to tend the fire, she was going to yell and hit things, and after a while he would fall asleep to the sounds of her playing on her pip-boy.

“It’s insane!” He heard her yell. He tried to concentrate on cleaning his rifle, but it was spotless and she was loud.

“This world is insane! Everything is wrong! All day, every day, just walking and killing and- And-“  
A piece of debris hit him in the thigh, and he looked up to find her standing above him, huffing and red in the face.  
“And- YOU!”

She pointed a quivering finger at him. X6 closed his eyes behind his glasses, willing forth all the patience he had.  
If she wanted to take out her anger on him, so be it. He was built to take bullets and abuse. Nothing to do but just shut his mouth, clench his fists, wait it out-

“You’re- Y- You’re **tall!** ”

She spat the word so venomously it didn’t register with him at first. She was pointing at him like she had spent months following a conspiracy, he was the ultimate culprit, and now she was delivering the accusation in a court room.

“I am _tall_ , ma’am?”  
His resigned boredom warmed in his chest, becoming something close to amusement. He had never been called tall in such a vicious way before.

She was breathing heavily.

“I- I- I don’t know! You’re tall, and you’re full of muscles, and you- you wear aviators! All the time!”

Every accusation rang like a gunshot through the empty room. The amusement was rising to his throat, threatening to become a laugh, but he didn’t think she would respond well to that.

“Correct, ma’am. On all accounts.”

She spun on her heels. Then she spun back. Her eyes were wide with rage, but she had run out of things to direct it at, resulting in another gloved finger aimed right for his chest.

“You- I can’t even look at you right now!”

Then she stomped off to find something else to shout at.

He allowed himself a secret smile as he stoked the fire, starting to rifle through their shared backpack for something to cook, when he heard the distant echo of her voice once again.

“Coat! You wear a coat!” she said. Like it was the worst crime in the world.  
He wanted to laugh so bad.

The next morning found them, glum and grey, and he almost looked forward to hearing her complain about the rain. He had also made up his mind.  
She had experienced real misfortune and she wanted to talk about it, resulting in an under category he was going to call “want to talk about it”, or WTA. She would likely be the only person to even fit the classification.  
Her sudden anger hadn’t subsided during the night, and she made massive, deep footprints in the mud as they walked.

“It’s gonna rain,” she hissed.  
There it was again. The gentle warmth in his chest, amusement bordering on affection.  
“It’s gonna rain, and it’s only gonna rain directly over me. Always. Forever.”  
He allowed himself to breathe sharply through his nose instead of laughing.

“Ma’am,” he began, making sure his voice was as emotionless as it should be.  
“Might I ask you a question?”

“Fire away,” she muttered.

“Yesterday, when you said I was tall, was it meant as an insult?”

To his surprise he saw her face soften a little. She looked away from him, deliberately, and responded so quietly he had to strain to hear.

“… No. Not really. I just- I just had to say something. Didn’t wanna say something I didn’t mean, ether, so I just… Ugh, you know.”  
He didn’t know, but he kept that secret smile hidden away in his chest as they walked (or stomped) towards Point E.

It did start to rain, though not exclusively over her like she had predicted, and Point E turned out to be infested with molerats. It did have some intact buildings to sleep in, though. The future Director found herself consumed with rage again after the ensuing fight, and X6-88 was tending the fire once more, listening to her endless supply of complaints.

“This- Shit- Aint- Natural!” she screamed, picking up the corpse of a molerat and shaking it like she wanted answers.  
“This is what rats look like now?! How! Why!”  
She threw it at a wall and it made a big splash.

“They mutated, as a result of excessive radiation over generations. Ma’am.” X6 stated factually, knowing it was going to bring her wrath upon him. That was exactly what he wanted.  
Sure enough, she threw a straw pillow at his head and yelled in his general direction.

“You! Don’t you start! With your- Your- Fucking-“  
Her chest was heaving and her fingers were curling, but he could see something new in her face. Confusion, maybe. Restraint.

“You… Argh! With your big hands and your fucking- _boots_ \- right on your feet those boots are! Fuck off with your crisp voice and your chiselled chin, you-“ She snapped for breath, ready to deliver her final, most devastating insult yet.  
“You _guy_!”

He was glad she turned away, because he had to quickly put his hand to his mouth and stifle himself. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time something made him smile, let alone laugh, but pushing her buttons was the most entertaining thing he had done since leaving the Institute.

He dodged a tattered shirt she threw at him and watched her pace around the house, kicking and punching inanimate objects with a vengeance. He then resumed his cooking.  
The warmth of the fire was blending with the warmth in his chest.

Once she finally calmed down the Commonwealth was under a blanket of darkness, barely held at bay by their little fire. The sudden and oppressive night was something else X6-88 had to get used to up here; the night was not just darkness, like in the Institute, it was a massive and physical _entity_ that crept up behind you and choked you out. The flickering flame cast sharp shadows over his companion where she lay on her stomach, arms curled up beneath the jacket she was using as a pillow, and he noticed how vulnerable she looked. Tired. Pale. Her face was stretched thin by stress and malnutrition, and beneath those closed eyes he could see big, dark bags, almost purple in colour. Every morning her flame roared within her, and every night it went out.  
He wondered what she was burning, and how much she had left.

Wait. _Burned out_. He had definitely heard that term before, somewhere, used to describe the homeless and the addicted that littered the wasteland. His future director was already drinking heavily, would it be too much to assume she would turn to chems in the future?  
Was that any of his business?  
It felt like his business. In fact, it felt more like his business every second he watched her, heavily armoured shoulders just barely moving as she breathed, her face still as a dead man. She slept so deeply, and every morning he spent several minutes trying to wake her up to get going. Maybe one of these nights her flame would burn so low that no amount of shaking, kicking and shouting could get it going again, and she would simply waste away in her sleep.  
The thought gave him a sour taste in his mouth.

He let her sleep in the next morning.

The rain showed no signs of letting up as X6 prepared a simple breakfast of mirelurk, and the fishy smell seemed to rouse his boss, who opened her eyes so slowly you’d think they had been glued shut.  
“Time,” she gurgled. She wasn’t the most talkative in the mornings.  
X6 looked out the wrecked doorway, but the sun was hidden beneath dark clouds.  
“I’m not certain, ma’am. You should consult your pip-boy device.”

It seemingly took all the strength she had to pull her arm out from beneath her head and squint at the green screen.  
“Fuckin’… Eleven.” She concluded. Then she slowly turned over on her back and stared at the ceiling like it owed her money.  
“You didn’t wake me up.”  
“No, ma’am.”  
“Why?”  
“I assumed we would spend the day building, and I saw no need to rush. I apologize if I was mistaken.”

She closed her eyes again and let out a deep, long breath, trying to purge her body of sleep.

“Fucking kill me.” She mumbled. She often did that in the mornings, if she could speak at all. X6 had yet to take her up on it.

She said it again as she sat up, back creaking and joints popping, and a third time as she accepted a bowl of roasted meat.

“I assume you know I have no intentions of terminating you, ma’am,” he reminded her as they ate. She frowned, cleared her throat, and when she spoke again he could see the fire inside her come alive.  
“Just- Nngh, no, yeah. I don’t mean it. If you kill me, I’ll haunt your ass forever.”  
“There is no yet recorded evidence proving the existence of the paranormal, ma’am.”  
“I’ll fucking prove it,” she grunted. She was shovelling food into her face like the world was ending.  
“I’ll be the first asshole ghost. A… A fuckin’ vengeful poltergeist, and I’ll haunt scientists that will prove my existence, and then I’ll start only haunting people who know about me so they share the story. And I’m starting with you-“ she pointed her fork at him “-you cooking, smoky-smelling fuck.”

It didn’t feel like an insult. He never thought the day would come when “smoky-smelling fuck” felt like a term of endearment, but here it was. He finished his meal in silence and let her grumble.

She was short-tempered, loud, childish and had a tendency to steal kills, but goddamn if the future director wasn’t good with her hands. She must have had some experience with engineering before the war. Watching her break and repurpose old coffee mugs into ceramic fuses, beat together old wooden boards to form massive radio towers and patch up gaping wounds in every structure was a real treat. He was mostly reduced to manual labour when they built, and he could hear her muttering to herself while carrying bags of fertilizer and concrete.

“The fuck you mean I’m out of screws,” she growled to no one in particular while welding together the skeleton of a turret.  
“I just had them- right here! Ugh.”

“Thanks, sky, I love being soggy when making stuff. This is probably great for the wiring.”

“Farmers better appreciate this shit…”

“Where the- X6! Have you seen my pliers?!”  
“Right here, ma’am.”  
“Thank you, baby Jesus. If I lost these I would hunt down and kill a deathclaw matriarch, steal one her eggs, raise the baby from infancy, rig it with _explosives_ and then ride it into Downtown Boston.”  
X6 had to turn away.

“What a strange and convoluted way to express your frustration, ma’am.”  
His voice showed no signs of the secret smile he was hiding.

“Don’t push me! I’ll do it!” She said, pointing her pliers into the air like a sword.

A minute later he heard her mutter “… Name it Marigold, too…” under her breath and he had to duck into the ruined house for a moment.


End file.
